Looking Back: September on Main Street

The East Side of Main Street, Circa 1920


by Marcia Napier, Grain Valley Historical Society
 
The September 2024 calendar photograph shows Grain Valley in the early 1900s. The east side of Main Street, then known as Broadway was part of the original town. This picture begins at the railroad tracks and looks North. The first building, on Lot 19, is Warren Webb Hardware, built by William Warren and Tommie Webb.

An early photo of the building is dated 1902.  Next door, on Lot 20 is the old hotel. The two-story brick building had several owners before it was converted to a gas station and garage with tiny one or two room apartments on the second floor. The building, then known as the Huff Building, burned in 1959.

Across Front Street on Lot 22 there was a two-story green house owned by Mrs. Morrison. The lower floor housed her millinery shop. Mittie Sanders, my maternal grandmother, was working there in 1906 when she married my grandfather.  She used to tell me about the fancy hats they made for the ladies of Grain Valley to wear to church and for special occasions.

Next was O’Connell’s Tonsorial and Bath House (Lot 24). I’m unsure of the business on Lot 25, but the sign on the building indicates that it was also the location of the telephone office. Eventually the first two buildings were torn down and replaced by a brick structure known as the Ryan Building.

On a 1924 map it was labeled as a hotel.  Today that building houses a tattoo shop. The final building visible on the calendar page (Lot 26 & 27) is Williams Meat Market, later Frantz’s Grocery Store until it closed in 1973. 

Here is an excerpt from this column written in April, 2020:
Frantz Grocery was one of the last old-time stores of its kind, offering services that slowly died out with the introduction of modern supermarkets. The grocery store specialized in high-quality meat and Mr. Frantz and his butcher, Otis Williams, cut it for the customer’s needs. If Mom needed a 3-pound roast, that’s what she got! If company was coming it might be 4 or 5-pounds. If you ordered hamburger it was ground just before it went into the wrapper and a variety of lunch meats could be bought by the slice.
 
The first two buildings, Lot 19 and 20, are now a parking lot. Two locations in this photo are currently for rent in Downtown Grain Valley. There are more stories to be told!